Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comment and I too like to make my decisions based on evidence.
Things are not black and white. We are seeing a government that is focusing on giving simple messages as opposed to looking at the detailed study. Let us hear from those people who have done the studies, such as the academics, if there is research work. Let us take a look.
Nine years is not a long time. My party agreed there was some tweaking to be done, but I would like to hear from some of those jurisdictions that will be affected, the ones who are asking for it and certainly the ones who are concerned about it. I know the Minister of Justice in Saskatchewan has made some public musings about how this may affect certain populations within his province. There are concerns, but they are not even voiced as concerns. It is just a lack of information about how this will impact on costs.
We can talk to people. There are people who are coming to me from the victims' groups, from the families of the offenders, and from the people who have dealings in the prisons as their business, the societies, whether for men or women, that regularly interact with the prison population and have a good understanding of it. We need to hear from them.
Personally, I would like to know whether or not the Minister of Justice gave this bill for consultation before he tabled it, showed it to the ministers, or whether he relied on the past territorial justice ministers meetings and conversations. I know he said that he had conversations with the various ministers of justice after the fact. I just wanted to know whether this bill was actually run by them because I think they would be surprised at the severity of what is contained here.
It is going to take a lot of time to carefully go through the sections of the Criminal Code offences that will be affected by this bill, as well as the affected sections in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. It is work on which I trust the party opposite, the government, will work together with the parties on this side of the House and opposition parties. In fairness to the complexity of the bill and the impact it is going to have, the bill itself is an easy read when it says anything over 10 years. That is not complex. What is complex is the impact and how it will affect all of our systems.
We have judicial rulings, cases like Askov, where if things are bogged down too much and there is a delay in bringing something before the courts, it is going to get thrown out because of that delay. We cannot just affect one situation and not realize it has impacts.
I am absolutely convinced we do not have enough money in the criminal legal aid system right now. There is no mention of it, nothing was allocated, and when I asked the justice minister about criminal legal aid at committee when he appeared before us, the response was that we were having discussions. We cannot change this law without having some things in place so people can cope with it because then we are going to have real problems.
My concern is that on some very serious things, prosecutors will opt for going by way of summary conviction, where if there are some options of sentencing in the conditional sentencing, such as in some fraud situations or cattle rustling or whatever particular section of the code is included, there might be a better way.
We are not going to play politics. We are going to work with you if you will work with us. If you will not work with us, we will work with the other opposition parties, but I do not think this bill will pass in its present form.